The Master Of The Flying Guillotine

A one-armed kung fu master is hunted by a blind assassin whose weapon is a bladed hat on a chain — the flying guillotine — that takes a man’s head with one pull. Jimmy Wang Yu writes, directs, and stars as the One-Armed Boxer, the role that made him a rival to Shaw Brothers after he broke away from the studio that had minted him in The One-Armed Swordsman. This 1976 sequel to his own One-Armed Boxer arrives at the wild peak of 1970s Hong Kong kung fu: tournament fighters from every style, an Indian mystic with stretching arms, a Thai boxer, and set pieces that care more about invention than realism. Wang Yu, actor-auteur of the independent Taiwan/Hong Kong circuit, turned the genre’s one-armed hero into a franchise of revenge and spectacle. A cult weapon movie later beloved by Quentin Tarantino, it is peak grindhouse wuxia — mean, colorful, and unforgettable.